


How Long Has This Been Going On?

by IvanW



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Confessions, Love, M/M, One Shot, Past Relationship(s), Romance, reference to past death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 02:49:05
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,654
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25287109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IvanW/pseuds/IvanW
Summary: The title comes from a song, but the plot doesn't really follow it.Spock comes to Jim with something Spock Prime wrote about him.
Relationships: James T. Kirk/Spock
Comments: 22
Kudos: 187





	How Long Has This Been Going On?

It really wasn’t a debate as to whether he should let Spock in. Honest.

It was merely that he was really tired. It had been a long, difficult day. The mission had gone terrible from the start and they’d come back with two less crew members after it all finished.

He’d gotten checked out in the medbay by a strangely silent and compliant Bones, sent the condolence notices he was required to send, had eaten a big plate of spaghetti, with a salad to make Bones happy, had taken his shower, and was getting ready to crawl into bed with hope he didn’t see the terrified face of Ensign Jones in his dreams.

And then his door buzzed for entry.

They were supposed to play chess. Jim knew it. But he’d thought it was a given that wasn’t going to happen. Not today.

“Come in.”

The door let him have access and for a moment Jim wasn’t sure what to say for Spock had something clutched tightly in his hands that looked kind of like old-fashioned paper.

“Uh. Look, I’m really not up for chess tonight. I was headed for bed, honestly, and…”

“Chess is not on my mind.” Spock took a step forward. There was something very off about his first officer. His dark eyes were wide and vaguely unfocused. He hadn’t been on the planet with Jim and the others, which Jim had been glad for, but—

“What’s wrong?”

“You…you have lied.”

Jim blinked. “What? I’ve what?”

“There are secrets that you…I am at a loss.”

“I can see that. Seriously. And normally, I don’t know, Spock, I’d indulge this, and I’d pry whatever you’re talking about out of you, I would, because you’re my friend, but right now I have a splitting headache, and I’m in danger of losing my shit so if you…”

Spock shook the thing he was holding. “You were intimate with him.”

Jim just stared at him.

“ _My counterpart_.”

Jim took a step back and then was mad about having done so. This was his quarters, damn it.

“That’s none of your business.” Jim frowned. “But wait…how did…?”

“Then it is true.”

Jim rubbed the back of his neck. “Yeah, we were.”

“I do not understand.”

“We’re really going to do this now, aren’t we?” Jim sighed, shook his head. “I need a drink.” He walked over the replicator. “You want one? I’m having a brandy.”

“Yes.”

Jim glanced at him, shrugged. Got two.

“You want to sit?”

“Will it make it any easier to hear?”

“Let me put it this way, I’m going to sit and I really don’t want you hovering over me. Sit.”

He gestured to one of the chairs by his desk and then sat on the edge of his bed himself. It might have been a mistake, though, because the minute his ass hit the bed he was tempted to lie down and never get up. For hours anyway.

Instead he took a fortifying sip of the brandy. It was nothing like the real stuff, but he’d drank the last of that with Bones some time ago, and this would have to do.

“After…well, the truth is, I had been dealing with these feelings for some time.”

“Feelings,” Spock repeated as though it was a bad word and for Vulcans Jim guessed it was.

In for a penny, in for a pound, or whatever the old saying was.

“Yeah.” Jim nodded. “For you. At first, I thought it was just sexual attraction. So I tried to get rid of it by, you know, the usual methods.”

Spock simply stared at him and Jim shifted uncomfortably.

“But those feelings continued and increased until well…” He moistened his lips and then took another sip of the fake brandy. “But you were with Uhura and there wasn’t anything I could do about it. And then, after Khan, I thought, I mean it seemed like maybe there was, I don’t know, some kind of reciprocation there. When I was dying. I hoped there was. But I woke up and everything was just like it had always been and you were still with Uhura.”

He gripped his glass tighter and wondered why Spock hadn’t taken a single sip. More why he’d accepted it in the first place. And why he stared at Jim like he was looking right through him.

“So, Spock, the other one, the ambassador, he came to see me in the hospital. We got to talking a lot then. When it was clear to everyone that I was going to be okay, everyone left to do their own thing, and I got it, we had leave because of the repairs and my recovery, but you left with her, and pretty much everyone else left too except Bones and him. Bones said I could leave the hospital and well, he agreed to take care of me during my recovery.”

“I see.”

The first words Spock had said in a while.

Jim cleared his throat. “We became close. Really close. And I fell for him and he for me.”

Spock pursed his lips. He glanced down at the brandy in his hands and lifted the glass to his lips, taking a tiny sip. Then he sighed.

“How long?”

“From right after I left the hospital until the Enterprise left for the five-year mission,” Jim replied. “I went to the ship and he went back to New Vulcan. That was…that was the last time we saw each other. We kept in touch when we could. When I was in range. And I knew when he…when he got sick there at the end and he told me he wasn’t going to make it.” He downed the rest of his own brandy. He reached for what Spock held. “What is that?”

Spock looked down at the paper. “He wrote about you.”

“Did he?”

“Yes. I found this amongst the things he had left to me which I received on Yorktown. I hadn’t gone through everything until recently.”

Jim dropped his hand as it was clear Spock wasn’t going to immediately give him the paper.

“After it ended between us because it had to, I guess, I still…I had these feelings for you even after everything, but you and Uhura were still together so I thought it would be best if I was somewhere else.”

“Yorktown,” Spock said softly.

“Right. But then Krall happened and I decided to stay, in spite of everything, in spite of the fact, that once more you guys were together. And so, yeah, that’s my life, and how and why it happened. But I loved him and he loved me, for who we weren’t, yeah, I guess, but also for who we were.”

Finally, Spock handed him the paper, worn and just a little smudged, and Jim’s heartbeat sped up, and he didn’t know why, but he felt as though the smudges were from tears. Tears from the Ambassador.

_Dearest Jim_

_Though our time together was all too brief, it was a comforting warmth to me in my final days, and I carry your memory in my heart as one of the finest I have known. A life is like a garden. Perfect moments can be had, but not preserved, except in memory. Yours, Spock._

He raised his gaze to his first officer.

“This was addressed to me.”

Spock turned a light shade of green. “Yes. I…I realized, but I was curious and I…” Spock exhaled. “Jim. I have similar feelings to-to what you have described.”

It was Jim’s turn to just stare at Spock.

“Perhaps your…have your emotions…that is…do you have those feelings still for me or have they disappeared over time?”

Jim swallowed hard, torn between being gently amused by Spock’s almost sweet awkwardness and by a tiny spark of hope that he had not allowed himself to have for a very long time.

“No,” he said simply.

Which was apparently far too vague because he saw the light dim from Spock’s dark eyes and he went over Spock’s words again.

“Spock,” Jim said, with a tiny laugh. “The no was to the second question.”

“Oh.” Spock blinked slowly, kind of like a cat, really. “My romantic relationship with-with Nyota ended some months ago.”

“I know.”

“Yet, you made no attempt to disclose your feelings.”

Jim shook his head. “I didn’t really think I ever had a chance.”

“You…do. A rather large one.”

For the first time in probably hours, Jim felt a genuine smile tug at his lips. “Come here.”

Spock hesitated only a moment, then stood, and looked around for a place to lay his glass. He finally brought it to the desk and then stepped over to where Jim sat on the bed.

Jim had expected Spock to sit beside him so he was startled when Spock knelt at his feet in front of him and reached for Jim’s hands.

“My counterpart,” Spock whispered.

Jim squeezed Spock’s hands. “I loved him and he loved me. For those few months we had, we were very happy together, but we knew it wouldn’t or couldn’t be forever or even a very long time. He was not a substitute for you and I was not a substitute for his captain, our feelings were our own. But…I never stopped loving you even so. And I still do.”

“Will you forgive me for being too blind to see what was in front of me for so long?”

Jim brought Spock’s hands to his lips and kissed them. “I do. And what began as such a horrible day, now fills me with a hope for the future I have not felt in such a long time.”

“It is the same for me.” Spock’s eyes were shining as he leaned up toward Jim. “May I kiss you?”

“Let me kiss you.”

And Jim did.

**Author's Note:**

> I used the wonderful Mr. Nimoy's final tweet in his letter to Jim. They are too poignant not to use.


End file.
